Children of the Enemy

by Steven DeBonis

  Sometimes I feel depressed here. I have no money. I am eager to work, but there is nothing to do. I worry about what my life will be in America. I don’t want to wind up on the street like in Vietnam.

  Postscript: Loan and Hoa left the PRPC for Houston on a gray humid day in July. Her family was sponsored by a local resettlement agency. For them, as for all the refugees, departure was a time of mixed feelings. It had been eight years since Hoa first applied to leave Vietnam to go to the States; she had waited a long time. Now that America loomed so close, however, it seemed terrifying.

  The PRPC departure area was crowded that day. A group of Amerasian kids were sprawled on the cement floor of the waiting shed, playing cards. Clusters of families and friends formed small enclaves, talking, crying, saying goodbye. I found Hoa with a group of her friends. They had been waiting for me to come to snap some photos.

  Hoa was preoccupied. “What I do in your country?” she asked. “I can’t read, I can’t write, I never go to school. What I do there, how I get money? I will work anything to take care of my babies, but what can I do?” Her main concern was not to wind up on the street again.

  Hoa told me that her son Phi was scheduled to arrive in the PRPC in a few weeks. Her son’s welfare was another worry, and one over which she had no control.

  Names were being called for the refugees to have their predeparture physicals. Hoa and her daughter lined up, and we said our goodbyes. “When I get to Houston, I find somebody write letter for me. I write you for sure,” she assured me, but I haven’t heard from her since.

  Lan and Trung

  “I hope that the first American I meet is my daddy.”

  “‘If I see my father one time, that’s enough, then I can die.’ That’s what he says. “Lan is speaking about her son Trung’s consuming passion. “He wants to find his father,” she continues. “But he won’t let me see him. He says he wants his father to remember the beautiful young girl he fell in love with, not the old lady I am now. ”

  The “old lady” is a graceful and attractive woman of forty-four. Her English, virtually unused since her days as a secretary with the Civilian Personnel Office at the First Marine Division base in Da Nang, is still remarkably functional and descriptive; she rarely falters as we speak. Lan is not her real name, but the nickname by which Peter, Trung’s father, called her, and she requested that I use it in her narrative.

  We met in her billet for three consecutive evenings in the days before she was to leave the Philippine Refugee Processing Center for the United States. The Philippines was experiencing one of its frequent power shortages, and we often spoke by the smokey flame of a kerosene lamp, blindly swatting at the ubiquitous mosquitoes. Trung was frequently present, sitting on the floor next to his mother’s stool, straining to catch any familiar word in the language of his father. Occasionally he would enter the conversation,, and Lan would translate his Vietnamese into English.

  Lan asked that I not record our conversation, and for two evenings, I obligingly took down her words in a small blue notebook. The final day of our conversations, in sympathy with the frustrations of note taking in the dim light, she graciously agreed to let me tape her story.

  If you look carefully along the bridge of his nose, you might discern a slight Asian cast to Trung’s features. Otherwise, his appearance is that of a handsome Caucasian in his early twenties. The ostracization he felt as a result of his white skin and round eyes has intensified his desire to search for his American father.

  Trung was conceived through a relationship his mother had with Peter, an

  American soldier, at a time when her marriage to a Vietnamese army officer had dissolved. Shortly after Trung’s birth, Lan and her husband reunited, and they have remained together, although Lan characterizes their marriage as “without love.” They came to the PRPC along with two of their three children and Trung.

  Lan’s husband accepted Trung as his son, and he is the only father Trung has ever known, but Lan comments, “For Trung, it is not enough. More than anything he wants to know his American father.”

  Lan: I am really forty-three, but I appear a year older on my documents. I had to change them in order to get a job with the U.S. marines.

  In 1965 my father died in an auto accident. That same year I went to see my uncle in Da Nang during the summer vacation. My uncle’s friend took me over to an agency in order to apply for a job with the Americans. I made an appointment for the test, and then I went back to Hue, my hometown, to ask my mother’s permission. She agreed, and I got the job and went to work as a secretary for the Civilian Personnel Corps at the First Marine Division base at Da Nang.

  Hue is beautiful, the most beautiful city in Vietnam. Many of Vietnam’s presidents are from there, like President Diem, and many kings were born there. I would have loved to stay there, but work was in Da Nang, so I had to go, and my whole family moved with me.

  We stayed with my uncle for a year, and then with the salary I made at the base I bought a small house for my family. My mother went back to Hue and sold our family house. After three years, I got a promotion, and I bought a bigger house. Our life was good, I received a high salary. I worked as a secretary for the marines. When they pulled out in 1971, the army came, and I worked as a secretary for them. When they left in ’72, I went to work for MACV [Military Assistance Command, Vietnam].

  Most of the military men I worked with were officers. They got along very well with the Vietnamese, they really knew how to treat them. First I thought that these men were very intelligent, but now I realize they must have had special training on how to act with Asian people.

  In my job, I went around a lot. I went to the Finance Department to pick up payroll, to the Civilian Personnel Office, many places. Sometimes I went out to the villages and hamlets as part of the Civil Affairs Program. We would hand out medicines, see the hamlet chief, go to celebrations. The captain and the colonel would go, and I would go along as the translator. The CO’s driver, Peter Stephen Elwood [not a real name], drove me to all these places. We were always together, and we got to be good friends. One day we had a bad argument. He came to my office to apologize, but it turned out to be more than an apology and that day we became lovers.

  In 1970, when Peter left to go back to the United States, I was three months pregnant. When he left, he told me that he hoped the baby would be a son, and it was.

  I received two letters from Peter, but I never answered them. Shortly after he left, I found out that he was married. I know his wife’s name, it’s Linda. I didn’t want to write, I didn’t want to cause Linda heartache.

  I was married before I met Peter, to a Vietnamese man, and already had two children by him. He worked as a male nurse. But even before I got to know Peter, I had split with that husband. We weren’t getting along, and then I heard that he had some other girlfriends. I never saw anything, but I heard about it. Little by little I got angrier and angrier, I don’t know what came over me. Eventually we separated. But you know, three days after I gave birth to my Amerasian son, he came back to me and he is still with me now. He has been a good father to our children and to Trung, my Amerasian son. He is the only father Trung has ever known, but for Trung, this is not enough. Trung, more than anything, wants to know his American father.

  Even though my husband is good to my children, we don’t love each other. There is no feeling between us. I am Catholic, so we cannot divorce. He was Buddhist, but he became Catholic too. I know it’s difficult to believe that if you don’t love a man, you still must live together, even if you have no happiness, but I am Catholic, and that’s what I believe. I must stay with him even if he brings me no joy, even if we argue, even if we don’t love each other. He treats my children well, he treats my Amerasian son well, but between us there is nothing.

  In ’75 we escaped from Da Nang, in March. There were so many rockets, and the Communists dropped letters saying that they were going to take Da Nang. I had to get out because I had worked for the American milita
ry and was raising an Amerasian son.

  At that time, there were rocket attacks day and night. We had to move out by a big Vietnamese military boat, evacuating many people on to Saigon. My whole family was on the boat, my husband, my children, my brothers and sisters, and my mother. On the way, the commander of the boat got the order to go back to Da Nang to pick up some more refugees, so he stopped the boat at Cam Ranh base and dropped everybody off there. Cam Ranh was under southern control and supposed to be safe.

  We were there about five hours, trying to get any transportation to leave for Phan Thiet, and then on to Saigon. Before we could get out, there was a rocket attack, so many rockets. We ran away, tried to hide. But who knows, we cannot tell who are the Communists and who are the people from the south. We ran like chickens, one over the other, this way and that, looking for a place to hide. Bombs were exploding everywhere, people were dying. It was terrible, terrible. I can’t even think how long it went on, I was too scared to know. I was carrying my youngest son and two of my brothers ran after me. My youngest sister ran after my mother to help her. My daughter and my oldest son ran after my brothers. When the rockets stopped, I was together with my brothers and my three of my children, but I was separated from my mother and Amerasian son. I couldn’t find them anywhere, and I didn’t know where my husband was. I thought they had been killed.

  Two days later my husband found us. He had gotten on land transportation to Phan Thiet, and when I got there he was already there. Still, we had not found my mother or Trung, my American son, and presumed them to be dead. From Phan Thiet to Vung Tau we took a boat, a fishing boat. We had nothing. We lost everything in the bombing. But I had some gold bracelets on my arms, and I used two of them to pay for the boat.

  We got to Vung Tau and stayed one night. Then we took a bus to Saigon. There we stayed with my uncle for eight months. He took care of my family, he’s rich. We found out my husband’s sister was living in My Tho city in Tien Giang province, and we went to live there.

  One day in 1980, my aunt, she’s a Catholic nun, visited my uncle in Saigon, and he told her that I was in My Tho. She came to see me, and told me that she had seen my mother and son, they were living in Phuoc Long. All this time, five years, we thought they had been killed in the bombing at Cam Ranh, and they thought we had been killed, but after Cam Ranh they had followed some neighbors to Phuoc Long and were living there.

  Phuoc Long is very rural, and My Tho is a town. In Vietnam, the government doesn’t allow people to transfer from the countryside to the city. If you are in the city, you can move out the countryside, but if you are outside the city, you cannot move into the city. So Trung could only come for a visit, and we would go to Phuoc Long and visit him. We were so happy to find my mother and son alive . . . after five years thinking they were dead.

  After I moved to My Tho, I got a job selling material at the city market. I started to be a vendor from there, and I earned enough money to take care of the family. Then I had my own material shop for two years, but the Communists came. They say that I cannot own that shop anymore, that I have to work for them. They came to inventory all my material, and they kept it. From then, I’m just their employee, and they pay me commission for what I sell. It was that way for two years until they gave the shop back to me. My salary was very low, they just gave me ten percent commission. I don’t know why they do that, take my shop away like that. They are Communists. That’s why we have to stay away from them. That’s why so many people were so scared, so afraid when they heard about the Communists because everything we have, everything we make, is supposed to be theirs. I don’t argue with them. Nobody can argue with them. They may kill you, they may put you in jail. I must be very careful about what I say. Because to them I am the type of person who is dangerous. They don’t trust me because I am the ex-U.S. employee. They know that.

  They put me in jail for ten days in 1977. They tell us we have to be honest about telling our background. So I believe that they have my records, and they already found out I work for Americans. Or, I think that maybe my neighbors told them, or if not yet, they will tell them. So I rather tell them before my neighbor does, and I said that I worked for the Americans.

  So I have to be what they call . . . brainwashed. That’s the word that the Vietnamese people use in that case. How long they keep you, it depends on what job you had. If I was in investigation or security or in the military, that would be different. But, I am just a civilian employee, so they keep me only ten days. Also, a woman they don’t keep as long as a man.

  Jail is terrible, terrible. I cannot explain to you exactly how they treat us. I hope you know what a Communist jail is. At first they use a call slip to call me to report right away to the police. I receive the call slip two o’clock in the afternoon, and I have to be there about two-fifteen. They bring me to another office, to security. I have to sit there and write down, just like my résumé, my background. I have to tell them everything. And then about two hours later, after I finish my form, they tell me to sit and wait. Then I hear the chain, and they unlock the door of some cell near there, and they call me, and they tell me to walk in. And when I walk in, there are so many women already there, with so many different troubles, reasons to be there. I just go in, and I cannot carry anything with me. That’s the prison rule. You just walk in and stay there. There are about thirty females in a room like this [about eight feet by twenty feet]. It’s too narrow for us in the hot season. We can fit in, but just like fish, one next to another. We got just rice, no other food, and about a half gallon water for a day. It’s very hot, and we cannot use mosquito net. If mosquito bites us, the Communists don’t worry about it, nothing happens to them. I got a cold, a bad cold because of the weather. It’s too hot and dirty. I cannot tell you just how dirty it was. Really terrible. When I get out of the prison, my friend ask me how it was, I say, “Terrible, that’s the only word I can use.”

  They got a toilet, just a temporary toilet, not by cement, just a hole, and we don’t have enough water to use to clean ourselves or flush after using it. So smelly, so bad. We have to save the water for face washing and tooth brushing.

  Women there had many different problems. Some of them got caught stealing, some of them, I don’t know how to use the word . . . taxi girl [prostitute]. When we get in, we were separated in different parts of the tiny cell. Girls like taxi girls be on one side, and when I get in, the chief of all these prisoners start to question me, and they find out who I am and they put me together with the type of person like me. I don’t know what they think, but they put me with the clean people. I don’t know why, but they separated into so many sections in the narrow place like that. The prisoners did that themselves. They give me a mat and say, you go over here and lie down. The chief, she’s the kind of person who is so mean or so strong that she can tell the people what to do. Sometimes there is an argument, and she says “Shut up! Stop!” And the people listen. It’s all females in that cell, but the guard is a male, Communist police. There are women police too, but they not in that prison.

  In 1978 we tried to escape from Vietnam by fishing boat. I arranged the boat through one of my friends. One of her friends owned a boat, and they were planning to get out of Vietnam, so they came to see us. They trust us because they believe I want to go, I have to go. So they came to us. It’s very dangerous if they ask the wrong person, they could go to jail. They ask me, and I pay them for the transportation—two bracelets. I had four on my arm. Two I used already from Phan Thiet to Vung Tau, and two I tried to keep. They were a present from my mother. But I spent them on that trip, and we didn’t make it.

  Two months after I gave the bracelets, we got on the boat. Somehow the police found out about it, and they took that boat away. So the police caught us, and I had to go to jail. I was supposed to be in jail for two years, but my husband paid them off, so I got out of jail in about twenty days.

  Two years later I try again. I bought my own boat, but I could not keep it because I live in the c
ity. So I asked some friends to keep it. They lived next to the river. Somehow, I don’t know how, the police got the boat. Maybe the neighbors of my friends informed, I don’t know. That time the boat was in the name of my oldest son because I had a big house. If my name was on the boat, I might lose the house if the police catch the boat. So they came to my house and searched it and found my son. He went to jail for about four months, and then I paid them off and got him out of jail. My daughter and my youngest son tried again. They got caught after four and a half days. They were already out at sea, and they got caught by a patrol boat but nothing happened to them because they were too young.

  The South Vietnamese, they are not Communist, but they taunt the Amerasian, I don’t know why. Maybe they act that way because they know the Communists don’t like us, so they try to act like they on the Communist side, so the Communists will trust them. Or maybe they just jealous because we were the American employees before. We had the good life before the Communists took over. Not too many people could get a job with the Americans because they couldn’t speak English or they weren’t educated. Or maybe they didn’t get a job, and then the Americans already pulled out, and it was too late. So maybe they are jealous.

  Vietnamese, especially little children, sometimes they are afraid of the black Amerasians. Maybe it’s because their skin is so dark and their teeth are so white that the children get scared. I don’t know. But for me there is no difference between the white and black, I don’t discriminate.

  You know, almost ninety-nine percent of people want to get out of Vietnam, but they got no way. So after the Amerasian program started and who has Amerasian children can go to America, they hate us because they are jealous of us.